May 28, 2007

Entry #2…finally…better late than never, right?...
I officially became a Peace Corps Volunteer on May 10th—my PCT status changed to PCV. We said goodbye to our host-families who had taken care of us over the past 2 months in training. My family gifted me with my first Ugandan outfit--pictures are to follow so check them out. It was a really nice surprise. They also invited me back to spend Christmas with them…who knows, I may have to celebrate it with them this year. They also named me…well they named me a while ago but I haven’t written. My Ugandan name is Nakku. The name comes from the Fumbe clan, which is my host-father’s clan.

The swearing-in ceremony was held at the Ambassador’s house. Immediately after, we headed off to our new sites. I’m living in a relatively large Ugandan town. I live with 3 Ugandan women, a man, and a 4-month-old baby. The organization I’ve been assigned to work with aims at re-settling children who are living on the streets back into their homes. They also enroll them in the local primary or secondary school. Education in Uganda is not free and many families struggle to pay the school fees. As an economic development volunteer, I’ll be working with many of the mothers’ of these children on income-generating activities. There is a women’s club and a men’s club that meet once a week. These are the people that I’ll primarily be working with. Some of these women have small businesses where they sell things like charcoal or fish. I’ve visited 2 of the women so far and I’m just beginning to learn about them. It’ll take a little while before I get going on this, but I’m really excited about it.

I visited Kalangala last week, which is part of the islands in Lake Victoria. My organization had re-settled 2 of the kids there with their families so we went to check on them. It was really very beautiful there—although my site is also beautiful with rolling green hills! But it was really nice to see the water and the sand beaches. It’ll be a nice vacation spot…although you can’t go swimming in the water because there’s Schistosomiasis (Bilharzia), which is a not-so-fun parasite that makes you very ill. Not worth it at all. It was still really pretty though. After the visits, we headed over to take the ferry back home. Well, we got there at 1:45…the ferry left at 5:45…time in Uganda is not kept the same as it is in the US…ha.

That’s about it here…oh yeah, I gave myself a haircut yesterday...it’s not so easy to cut your own hair…I’ll get better at it though, I hope…